Product photography

There's a lot of random stuff floating around in my head right now: projects I'm working on, projects I'm planning, projects I'm thinking of planning... Much of my days lately are spent outside, at least as much as possible, with Lachlan and Sadie. Lachlan loves it, Sadie loves it, and I love it (except for the part of me that is freaking out over everything I need and want to do every day that involves not being in the yard).

We are trying to spend as much time outside now as possible, because the gnats usually come the beginning of June and they stay all month. They are outside all day long, only to be replaced by the mosquitos in the evenings. The gnats (no-see-ums) are little specks of black with wings and two big teeth. And they're MAD and wickedly ferocious and their bites itch so bad that you want to get a carrot peeler and remove that portion of your skin. Our fun outside will be coming to an end soon, at least for a few weeks until those little SOBs die for the season. But I digress.

As I go through my day I think of a lot of things I can blog about, but I rarely do because I feel like I need to devote a lot of attention to any particular item--with lots of great photos--to justify a blog post about it, and I simply don't have time for it. But that means I'm not here very much, and for those of you who expect me to be here, that must be irritating.

So I'm going to start sharing the really random, short bits of my life. Here's the first:

I finally, just today, started taking product photos for Saya's Nest. FINALLY. I know, right? Geesh. I've been blabbing my big fat mouth about this forever and going nowhere with it, or so it seems. In reality I have been building up my inventory, dreaming up products, and planning my photo shoots, and doing all that in the teeny tiny bit of free time I get each day.

Along the way I had to figure out how to work my camera better. I bought a book (The Crafter's Guide to Taking Great Photos) and read it (most of it, anyway), but I think I have only improved my skills by less than 10% so far. At least I figured out where the white balance on the camera is... It is something I'm working on and I realize it is the kind of thing that just takes a lot of practice.

So I'm trying to make time to practice.

Here's a shot from this afternoon with no editing at all other than cropping and reducing the file size. I can already see a lot of ways to improve it, um, including making it level with the world, but it's a start. I am using my husband's old tripod. It has a loose hinge, so the camera always ends up tilting just a bit to the right. I've had enough with trying to prop it up just right, so I'm finally going to order a new tripod tonight. Unless I forget about it as soon as I finish here, which is highly likely...

In case you were wondering, no, my house does not have a white brick wall. What you see in the background is actually a really cool vinyl product photography backdrop I got from Swanky Prints. Would you have ever guessed that it's not a real brick wall? It's one of two backdrops that I bought (the other is weathered wood). I absolutely love it, though I think I had her make it too small so I will probably have to get a larger one for some of the items I'd like to photograph with it. But it will do for now. Let not the best be the enemy of the good, as my two favorite docs at my old job like to say.

And in case you were also wondering, yes, Saya's Nest is going to have some letterpress type. Vintage type. And not just vintage type. Vintage a lot of things. Along with a lot of other non-vintage things. Which is why it's taking me forever and a day to get it open. Well, that and all the other things I've got going on at the moment. But my goal is to open it for business by the end of this week, if not sooner, with at least a few things. Some cool things. At least I hope people think they are cool things.

Meet Phoebe

I'd like to introduce you to a special little lady.

This is Phoebe. Well, she's a phoebe. She's Say's Phoebe, to be exact, named after Thomas Say, who first described her during his exploration to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-1820.

image from www.Towhee.net

She's classified as a small songbird and a medium-sized flycatcher. Her upperparts are pale brownish gray and her belly and undertail are cinnamon. She wags her tail.

Her habitat includes open country, sagebrush, badlands, dry barren foothills, canyons, borders of deserts, and ranches. She lays 3-6 eggs and usually incubates them for 12-14 days. Her nest is often placed on a ledge with cover, such as in a cave or on a building or bridge. In fact, I think it is this exact bird that has maintained a nest on top of a light fixture in my parents' garage for years (decades?).

And she's my kind of gal: she builds her nest using a variety of natural materials, such as rocks, weed stems, grass, plant fibers, spider webs and other items, and then lines it with soft items such as hair, fibers, paper, or feathers.
While her friends call her Say's Phoebe, the academics like to call her Sayornis Saya.

And if that name sounds familiar to you, you have a good memory. Coming soon. Very soon.

In the works: Part 2

With all the projects I have in the works right now, I have a lot of stuff. And by a lot of stuff, I mean every closet in every room is jam packed with stuff. And the guest room bed is piled about 2 feet high with stuff. And I have stuff in boxes stacked 6 feet high in my bedroom. And I have more stuff in plastic bins under my bed. And more stuff arrives almost every day.

And so the only logical thing to do was to convert the last remaining free space in our workshop--the space that was reserved to one day house the horse that still lives at my parents--into space to hold my stuff in a more organized and user-friendly manner.

The space, which is about 13 x 18 feet, is currently under construction. The walls and floor are in, and today he added a glass door between the new space and the adjacent space (that I took over last year) where I keep the presses. The new space doesn't have any windows, so the door was added not only to make it easier to use both spaces but also to let in a little bit of natural light.

The space can be accessed via the press room, through the main workshop, or from the outside.









I have spent a lot of time this week at Habitat for Humanity, buying up all their metal shelving units and as many base cabinets as I could find. I got some fantastic stuff. Now I just need to find the time to get it painted. Hopefully I can get that done by the time the space is finished and ready for me to move in.

And then there will be almost no limit to the amount of stuff that I can accumulate!

In the works

For those of you who read this blog directly on the website, you may have noticed that there is (FINALLY!) a new look around here. Ages ago I removed the old template with plans to immediately replace it. I think that was more than a year ago... I finally got tired of looking at it on my list of things to do, so I had the very wonderful Kayla of Rockaboo install this lovely new template for me.

This change is just the first of many, many, many new things in the works right now. One change that you may have already noticed is that there is now an "about me" page, which you can access at the top of the blog. And you may notice at the top right of the page the social media links, including twitter. Yes! I am finally on twitter as of about midnight last night. :) If any of you out there in blogland are on twitter, too, let me know.

 You may also notice that there are new pages for my two Etsy shops, Paper Ink Press and Paper and Present. But there's something else that's new up there... I had hoped to have it ready last fall, then early this year. Now I have so much going on that I'm hoping to have it ready by the end of April. Until then, here's a little sneak peak:

Three sneak peeks

I mentioned yesterday that I have four different shops in the works. I have my letterpress stationery shop (Paper Ink Press) and my letterpress surplus shop (i.e., the stuff my mean husband says we don't have room for, aka I Heart Letterpress).

Then I mentioned that I have another Etsy shop that I opened this past May. I have something in the works for that shop right now, so I'll hold off on telling you about it until probably this Thursday or Friday.

And then I have this other shop. Well, it's not yet a shop. At the moment it's still mostly just a bunch of ideas rolling around in my head when I wake up at 3 AM and can't fall back asleep. But I'm slowly pulling the pieces of it together and sorting through my ideas. I had originally hoped to have the shop up and running by November 1, which then quickly became November 15. I had hoped to be ready for the holiday shopping frenzy, but then I had an honest talk with myself and decided there wasn't any way I could accomplish that while still maintaining my other projects and remaining even remotely sane.

I'm really excited about this new shop. It encompasses a lot of things I'm really interested in and passionate about. In the past I felt like I needed to just focus on one thing, but in reality I have so many different interests and I was always a bit sad that I didn't allow myself to follow up on some of them. That's how my latest Etsy shop first came up. It was the first small step forward in my attempt to branch out and do some things I really like while allowing me the flexibility to work at the kitchen counter while Lachlan hangs onto my pant leg.

As I mentioned yesterday, my latest Etsy shop has held its own so far, especially considering that I haven't done a single thing to promote it. And that gave me the confidence that maybe my ideas for this other shop will work, too. So now I'm following up on those ideas. I have big things in mind for this new shop, and I want to do things right. I hired a graphic designer to design the logo and all the business collateral, which is in the final stages of development at the moment. I also plan to really advertise and promote this shop, and because I want to do that in a thoughtful way, I probably will hold off on that--and the official opening--until next year.

In the meantime, I am hoping to have sort of a pre-grand opening hopefully by December 1 with a very limited offering of goods. I know how my mind works and I'll want several weeks to find my way with this new shop before I go whole hog with it. I'll also have some small items that will make great stocking stuffers, so I'm thinking of something along the lines of a small, limited time "pop-up shop" to make them available in time for the holidays. I'll certainly keep you posted on that, and on the general development of the shop in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here are three small sneak peeks at a very small selection of things for the new shop. Confused? :)